sequences

One of the nice new things in 12c was the concept of identity columns. In terms of the functionality they provide (an automatic number default) it is really no different from anything we’ve had for years in the database via sequences, but native support for the declarative syntax makes migration from other database platforms a lot easier.

Under the covers, identity columns are implemented as sequences. This makes a lot of sense – why invent a new piece of functionality when you can exploit something that already has been tried and tested exhaustively for 20 years? So when you create a table with an identity column, you’ll see the appearance of a system named sequence to support it.

This question came to me over Twitter, so I thought I’d whip out a quick post on it

Yes, we do implement the IDENTITY column via a sequence. (Digression – I think this is a smart thing to do. After all, we’ve had sequences for 20 years, so we know how they work, they are mature, tested, and rock solid, so why invent something new?)

Lets say I’ve been reading about schema separation, and thus I am going to have a schema which owns all of my objects, which I’ll call APP_OWNER, which will have no connection privilege and a separate schema called APP_ADMIN which will take care of all of the DDL tasks.

I’m seeing an oddity with newly created sequences skipping the initial value. ie I create the sequence and the first use of it returns the value 2, not 1.

{update, see the post comments and this post by Niall – this is a side effect of delayed segment creation – the first insert silently fails, but gets the sequence, and is repeated behind the scenes once the segment is there. It is fixed in 11.2.0.3, my db is at 11.2.0.1 as I got sick of the download of the latest version failing on my poor broadband connection and got it off a mate – turns out it is not the latest version.
Thanks for the enlightenment Niall.}

This is on Oracle 11.2.0.1 on Windows (XP, Vista and now Windows 7 64 bit). I am sure I did not see this on Oracle 10.1 and 10.2 on linux, Tru64 and windows.